


they move on tracks of never-ending light

by silkspectred



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: (but not mcu Steve), Alternative Future, Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Bottom Steve Rogers, Comeplay, Comic Book Science, Established Relationship, Face-Fucking, Fake Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not Really Character Death, POV Steve Rogers, Rough Sex, Snowballing, bearded steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 21:29:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14881547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkspectred/pseuds/silkspectred
Summary: In an alternative future created by a time-traveling Peter Parker, Tony Stark has been dead for a year. Steve can’t let him go.





	they move on tracks of never-ending light

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is entirely based on a couple of pages from Peter Parker - The Spectacular Spider-Man #304. 
> 
> This issue is set in an alternative timeline originated when Peter goes back in time for Reasons and accidentally makes his younger self give up being Spider-Man (because it only leads to pain and death). In the new present, Norman Osborn is in control of the media, and Harry is the president of the United States. The Peter who stopped being Spider-Man is now an adult, and he runs Parker Industries while his wife Gwen helps the resistance in secret and against Peter’s wishes (he would prefer not to challenge the system). The resistance is what’s left of the superheroes after they were outlawed—the others are either dead, in jail, or started working for Osborn. Cue [these pages](http://silkspectred.tumblr.com/post/174703196660) where Canon!Peter meets the alternative versions of Doctor Strange, Steve (who has a beard), and Riri Williams, who tells him that Tony is dead. Together, they decide to try and break Doom out of one of Osborn’s prisons, in the hope that he will help Canon!Peter go back to the past and fix the timeline. 
> 
> So obviously I thought, what if Tony isn’t really dead? 
> 
> The chances of this being jossed (or, well, chipped, since Chip Zdarsky is writing the comic) are shockingly high. But I mean, it’s like, whatever.
> 
> Thanks to [tones](https://twitter.com/ironmantrilogy) and [erde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erde) for beta

After the plan is devised, Steve goes up to his room to change into a fresh uniform and prepare for battle.

He thinks about the weird look Riri just gave him in the corridor, troubled and worried. He hopes this hasn’t rattled her too much. It’s always bad when someone mentions Tony to them, or when they have to mention him to anyone else. Many people loved Iron Man, many people were close to Tony, but no one like Steve and Riri.

Steve takes off his gloves and drops them on his desk, his gaze catching on the shiny reflection of the light on the ring at his finger. He can almost feel the words engraved inside it, against his skin.

_Always together._

It had been the opposite of always, in the end. It had been barely a year. Then Tony attacked Harry Osborn, the President of the United States, loudly and publicly, and… and they killed him.

They killed Steve’s husband, mercilessly, cruelly. They left him to die slowly and painfully on the steps of a building, blood oozing out of him and staining the hard gray stone beneath him.

Steve saw it all from afar. He couldn’t even go to him.

He couldn’t even hold Tony’s hand one last time, tell him that everything was going to be alright. It would have been a lie, yes, but at least Tony wouldn’t have had to die alone and terrified. It had been one of Tony’s worst fears, and Steve hadn’t been able to stop it from becoming reality.

If he had been allowed anywhere near Tony, now he might even have a gravestone to talk to. Something of his, maybe. The ring Steve gave him, perhaps, with _You are my home_ etched inside.

But no. He had no body to bury. He could only watch, helplessly, while they shuffled Tony’s dead body away in an ambulance. He was never able to ask for it back—they were both criminals, and in Osborn’s America criminals had no rights. No one had rights.

He barely remembers how he got back home that night. He climbed the stairs back to their room and everything was there, ready for Tony to use, like always, like normal. Tony’s things didn’t know that Tony was gone, never to be back again.

It took Steve two months to finally wash the sheets. He cried into the clean pillow case for an hour after realizing that there really was no trace left on it of anything resembling Tony’s scent.

He remembers the quiet, the stillness of those first weeks. Everything felt like it was happening to someone else, as though Steve was just watching a movie, waiting for someone to laugh at the joke and snap him out of it. Everything felt so unreal, like a blanket of dust had settled over reality and made it all gray and muted. Sounds and colors weren’t the same as before.

He remembers not eating. For days. Not sleeping. Not shaving. Not being able to do anything at all except sit on his armchair in front of the window and stare outside, seeing nothing, while pain kept exploding in the middle of his chest because his heart felt like it was being constantly torn into pieces for the sick amusement of some superior entity that fed on his agony.

And he had plenty to give.

He remembers existing in this room, their room, a room that suddenly felt like a place Steve had never been to, because Tony wasn’t there anymore, and Tony was _supposed_ to be there. He had promised. _Until death do us part_ , and—

And death came, and took Tony with her, and left Steve here, rotting away, missing half of his soul.

And he was so angry, too. Angry because Steve had kept his end of the deal, his _forever_ , and Tony hadn’t, and what the hell was he thinking, anyway? Attacking Osborn like that, in broad daylight, with no protection, no plan, no backup. _What the hell were you thinking, Tony, goddammit—_

Steve wipes the tears away from his cheeks, trying to get a hold on himself. He walks around the room, and seeing Tony’s things now grounds him and destroys him at the same time. Tony’s clothes, still in their closet. His toothbrush in the bathroom, next to Steve’s. His shampoo still sitting on the shower shelf. No one will ever finish it now, and Steve isn’t going to throw the bottle away any time soon.

He knows he should.

It’s been a year, and he should start moving on, or at least make his peace with what happened. Accept it. There’s a revolution to fight for; they have to take back their country, and Steve needs to be at his best for that.

And in a way, sure, he’s better than he was those first weeks. He’s functional now, he’s not just a rag doll thrown on an armchair and left there to collect dust.

He should move on.

But he just can’t let Tony go.

Maybe someday he will. If he doesn’t die first, that is, then maybe in ten, twenty years, who knows, he’ll wake up and not think about how much he misses Tony. But it’s not going to happen sooner than that. Steve knows it perfectly well, because he knows himself that much.

And he can—sort of, but—he can accept it. In a way. It’s normal to feel like this. He’s a widower. They brutally murdered his husband in front of his eyes. It’s normal that he’s struggling to move past this. Past the violence that took the love of his life, his soulmate, the better part of him—away, forever.

He just wishes that at least the Bad Mornings would stop, because those are too awful. He doesn’t think he’s going to be able to survive a lifetime of those, no matter how occasionally they happen.

They are just—the worst.

The Bad Mornings usually start with a Bad Night: a night where Steve dreams of Tony being still alive, there with him. He dreams of Tony being happy, being whole and amazing, being clever and brilliant, his eyes shining with joy and love—for life, for Steve.

Then Steve wakes up, but not all the way, no. His brain makes him linger in that strange place between the dream and the real world. It’s just a moment. It’s always just a moment. The illusion never lasts for more than just that.

But it’s the worst.

During those few seconds, Steve is awake enough to be aware of his feelings, but he’s still also asleep enough to believe the lie that Tony is still alive. But then the moment passes, and reality slaps him in the face with all its brutality, and Steve opens his eyes, and the other side of his bed is empty because Tony isn’t there, because Tony is dead.

And Steve just lies there, still with so much disgust for himself and for life in general, because he was dreaming of his husband, of his beautiful, amazing husband being in bed next to him, kissing him, climbing on top of him, pushing inside him and making stars burst out low in Steve’s belly—but none of that was true, none of that was actually happening. It was just a dream. And now Steve is there, awake, alone, hard, and disgusted.

And there’s nothing he can do about it.

Sometimes, after a few hours, when he can put enough distance between one of the Bad Mornings and his feelings, he manages to find some pity for himself, some scraps of mercy. He thinks that his relationship with Tony was full of love, of trust, of understanding and support, but it was also full of amazing sex. So it’s only normal that Steve would miss all of it, every aspect of it. With how much they enjoyed each other’s bodies, it would almost be unfair for Steve not to miss that part of what he had built with Tony.

But still, when it happens… when he wakes up hard, Steve never touches himself. He wills his erection away quickly, the self-loathing that the whole experience infuses him with makes it easy.

He can’t—

He just can’t do it.

Maybe someday, yeah. It seems impossible now, but he knows that maybe one day he’ll be able to touch himself again and enjoy it, even. Being touched by someone else, though… Steve can’t even think about that. At all. It feels beyond wrong. The mere idea makes him want to throw up, so he avoids it. When those thoughts cross his mind Steve closes his eyes and touches his wedding ring and thinks about how beautiful Tony was the day they got married.

He shakes his head. He was hoping mentioning Tony hadn’t rattled Riri, but for sure it rattled Steve. He forces himself to focus on something else.

He thinks about what happened today, about what Spider-Man told him. That this is an alternative reality for him, a future born out of some mistake Peter made while messing with his own past. Apparently Osborn isn’t supposed to be ruling the States, and Tony isn’t supposed to be dead.

He’s thought about it, once or twice. About getting Doom to send him back in time. Save Tony. Take that bullet for him, if necessary, bleed out on those steps for him. But Doom was Osborn’s prisoner, and the same old problem presented itself: they couldn’t get into the damn prisons.

It makes him feel almost bad, now, all of a sudden. That he didn’t try everything in his power and beyond to bring Tony back to him, to bring Tony back at all. But Steve has thought about it; that’s why he was so quick to suggest it to Spider-Man.

But then a voice in his mind says something. It’s scolding him, but in an amused way. _Willingly disrupting the natural order of things? Really Steve, it’s not your style._

That’s right.

There’s still some conflict about it inside him, because he wishes he could just make the pain stop, but… yeah. The voice—Tony’s voice—has a point. It was a matter of principle too. A matter of morality, of a system of values that had to be true for Steve if it was true for everyone else.

He shakes his head again to clear away all the bad thoughts. He breathes out slowly a couple of times and concentrates on what he came to his bedroom for.

He needs to change his uniform. Right.  

He’s starting to unzip it when he hears a knock at the door. It’s Riri.

She enters the room but doesn’t shut the door behind herself. She leaves it ajar, just a bit. Steve frowns at that, because it doesn’t seem like Riri. She’s always so private, especially with her relationship with Steve, especially since Tony died. He can’t imagine her being okay with someone passing through the corridor and hearing whatever she has to say to him.

She looks down at the floor and she seems to search for a resolve that she doesn’t have. That’s strange too: if there’s something Riri has plenty of, it’s courage. There’s fire in her heart, there’s always been. It’s why Tony loved her so much, it’s why Steve loves her so much.

She takes a deep, steadying breath. The gray metal of her armor shines in the soft light of the room.

“I need to tell you something,” she says, and her hard gaze meets Steve’s and locks him there. He’s never seen her like this, on the verge of trembling with how nervous she is. “You’re going to hate me,” she adds, voice cracking at the edges.

“No—” he starts. _No_ , he wants to say, _I could never hate you._ She’s the closest thing he’s ever had to a daughter, there’s no way he could… but then—

“Tony is alive,” Riri says, her eyes now full of tears, and she can’t look at Steve anymore.

She hides her face behind a fist. Her frustration is so evident, and the need to make it better for her, to gather her in his arms and reassure her, keeps Steve from processing the information for a minute.

But then the words make their way into Steve’s brain, and he registers them.

Tony is alive.

That’s—

That makes no sense. That’s impossible, that’s not how life works. Hell, that’s not how _death_ works.

There’s a loud ringing in his ears. He feels weirdly hyper-aware of himself, as though he’s suddenly able to feel the blood rushing in his veins, his heart beating, his internal organs working.

His brain screams at him.

Tony is alive.

He can’t accept it. He’s spent so much time wishing it were true, trying to come to terms with the exact opposite, that now it’s just—

_What?_

He tries to speak, but his lips are stuck together, and separating them seems to need a disproportionate amount of force that he doesn’t have.

Riri lifts her head again, swallows her tears, and says, “I should’ve told you. But he—” she shakes her head, and scoffs, “No, I can’t blame it all on him. I agreed to it… Hell, it was basically my idea. Well, not that he’d… _die_ , but—”

“Riri, what are you—” The loud ringing is still in Steve’s ears, and now it suffocates his words, smothers them into hesitation.

“He… Remember that night when we talked about attacking the prisons where they keep Sam and Rhodey and Natasha? And we all agreed that it was too complicated, and that Osborn had explosives planted on every inmate, and that we had already lost too many people to risk losing even more? Better captured than dead, we said, remember?”

Steve is confused, he’s so confused. Why is Riri telling him this? What does it has to do with anything, with Tony being—

“Yeah, I remember,” he says, voice feeble and unsure, so unlike him.

“And then we decided that there was a safer way to try, that with the Pym Particles we could go in undetected and—”

“Riri. I remember. What—”

“Tony and I realized pretty soon that while the Pym Particles could help us get into the prison, they’d be useless to access the cells. They’re shielded in a way that… you just need the code, and…”

Steve’s heart is beating so fast that it feels as if it isn’t beating at all.

“There was no way he could’ve done it if he was still alive. I mean—if they thought he was still alive. Osborn knew that Tony would find a solution, he had tried to kill him already in the past, he just—”

_Oh God._

“So I said, _Why don’t you pretend to disappear or go missing_ , and Tony said, _They’ll never believe that_ , and I said, _Don’t say the thing I know you’re going to say next, please_ , and he said, _They need to think I’m dead or it will never work_ , so… so he faked his death. He’s not, uh… he’s not really dead—Steve are you alright?”

Steve’s legs are going to give up on him any second now. With shaky movements, he pulls up a chair and sits down on it. He feels like he weighs a ton.

He can feel the serum finally kicking in in his brain, helping him process this thing faster than regular people do. He lets it, because God knows he needs all the help he can get on this one.

“How did he,” he begins to say, but his voice trips over the sentence. His mouth is dry. “They shot him. Osborn’s men, they shot him. How did he—”

“Survive? He was wearing—” and Steve knows before Riri says it, but he lets her finish the sentence, “—the armor in camouflage mode.”

He nods at her. That thing is amazing, it basically turns the armor invisible.  

“The rest was just… fake blood.”

“And then? How did he get out of there? You were next to me, you couldn’t have helped him.”

“The moment they shut the door of the ambulance, he stunned the paramedics and drove it himself.”

Of course he did.

“He disguised himself and brought an LMD into the morgue. Faked the papers. No autopsy. They cremated him right away. Uh. _It._ ”

There’s just one question left to ask. “Did he figure out the codes?”

Riri smirks. “What do you think? He’s Tony Stark.”

Steve feels himself smiling. He had forgotten what that felt like, the sides of your mouth stretching out of joy instead of pain, his face wearing now a mask of something that’s not just pure anguish.

“Where… where is he? Can I see him, I—”

Riri blinks, and sort of startles. “Of course! He’s just… he was just hiding in my room and—” Riri reaches for the door, there’s a bit of rustling, and then—

“I was _not_ hiding, Riri Williams. How dare you.”

It’s the most beautiful thing Steve has ever heard. Suddenly, the ringing in his head disappears to make space for this, the best sound in the world: Tony’s voice. It wasn’t fading from Steve’s memory; the serum doesn’t really let him forget things, but Steve had been scared that for some reason it would slip away from his grasp and now… now he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.

Because Tony is here, now, in front of him, eyes dancing around their room— _their_ room—and then finally settling on Steve.

The smile on Tony’s face vanishes. He closes his eyes for a moment, as though to gather his strength, and he pouts, overwhelmingly sad.

“Missed me?” he says, and it was meant to be a little joke but there’s no spark in it. He knows he can’t joke about this, not just yet.

Steve gets up so fast that he kicks his chair to the floor. He takes Tony in.

He’s lost a few pounds. Steve doesn’t even want to imagine how bad his eating habits must have gotten while he was in hiding— _faking his death._ He hasn’t shaved in a few days, but the edges of his goatee are still there, so he must have kept up with his grooming routine while he was… yeah. He probably lived in some safe house, so he must have had no need to disguise himself, at least not lately. He’s wearing simple clothes, jeans and a shirt.

His eyes are _so_ blue. Of all things, Steve can’t believe that what had faded from his memory was just how deep the blue of Tony’s eyes is. Only reality can do it justice.

Steve hears Riri say something. He doesn’t know what; he’s not really listening. She leaves, though, so maybe she was excusing herself. Saying that she’d leave them alone to sort this out.

They stare at each other, and Steve realizes he hasn’t said anything yet. He doesn’t think his voice would come out right just about now.

Tony lifts his arms in an apologetic gesture, then drops them back to his sides in defeat.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and it’s so inadequate that Steve could cry if he had any tears left after the past year.

“Tony,” he says, but the word breaks in the middle; his voice can’t sustain its weight. He reaches out with his hand, almost covers Tony’s cheek with it, but then he can’t. Then he thinks about it again, and he goes for it. Tony’s skin is warm under Steve’s fingertips.

Tony melts into him, between his arms. Touching him is familiar and new at the same time, and so strange. The point of contact sparks with electricity, with excitement, with every emotion Steve has ever felt for Tony. He’s spent days, months, trying to remind himself that this was never going to happen again. Because Tony was gone. And now, now. Look at them now.

But it crashes down on him—the realization of what Tony did.

“Why… why could you not—”

_Why could you not tell me?_

“It had to look real, Steve,” Tony answers, and Steve knows it’s the truth but it hurts like a blade through his chest. Tony lied to him. About this. About being _dead._ There was a necessity that made lying to Steve about this acceptable in Tony’s mind.

He feels so tired. He’s devastated, torn apart and left to bleed out. All his love for Tony, everything he thought he knew about them just shifts, and he feels as though he’s in a snow globe that a child was shaking and then dropped to the floor, and now Steve is there, waiting to see how all the white specks will fall down, the shapes they’ll make.

No part of him is missing after the upheaval. After the revelation, Steve feels as though all the little pieces of himself have been scattered around, messed up; he feels as if he’s wearing his own skin inside out. But every part of him is accounted for, in a way that wasn’t true half an hour ago, when he still thought Tony was—

“Why did you come back? Why now?” Steve asks, and he still can’t recognize his own voice.

“Because I solved the issue with the cell codes and… Riri told me about Spider-Man. Steve. Don’t you get it?”

 _No_ , Steve wants to say. _No, I don’t fucking get why you left me and made me think you were dead._ But he just looks at Tony.

“If Spider-Man gets Doom to send him back in time, this entire reality—our reality—could disappear. Maybe we never even really existed in the first place, we are just the temporary product of a mistake. An illusion. All our memories, everything we lived—”

Right.

Tony goes on. “I couldn’t let that happen without…” He sighs. “But I mean, there’s also a small possibility that this whole mess is just a result of the intersection between the space-time continuum and the multiverse, and we—”

“You mean—”

“Yeah. I mean that maybe we aren’t just an alternative future, maybe we are also an alternative universe. Maybe Spider-Man can go back to his own timeline/universe and leave ours… unperturbed. But it’s a big chance we are taking here. There are so many things that could go wrong, I—”

Steve kisses him.

He doesn’t want to hear more. If this is his last night, their last night, their entire world’s last night—he’s not gonna waste it. He’s gonna swallow it all down—his bitterness, his sense of betrayal, the hurt—and just _have_ Tony.

Tony kisses him back and he tastes of loneliness and desperation—just the way Steve feels.

They should probably be more tender about this. Rediscover each other, handle their own emotions with a little care. But instead the kiss is hungry and ferocious, demanding, edging on violent, while Steve pulls Tony against him, hands rough and movements unrefined.

He doesn’t have time to be careful. He doesn’t want to be.

Steve bites into Tony’s lip and makes him yelp and groan. He must break the skin because he tastes blood for a moment. He licks a long strip along Tony’s neck, finishing just behind his ear, biting hard into the lobe just as he feels Tony’s nails digging in the soft skin at the base of Steve’s neck.

Steve pushes Tony down on his knees, without asking, without caring. He unzips his pants and takes his hard cock out of his underwear, keeps Tony’s head still with a hand in his hair, and then thrusts past Tony’s already parted lips without even thinking.

Tony’s arms flail around for a moment before settling over Steve’s thighs, then he moves them up to grab Steve’s hips for better balance. Steve feels him swallow around him, trying to make saliva pool on his tongue, trying to wet the corners of his lips to make the slide easier.

Steve doesn’t need easy. Steve just needs—

“Take it,” he says, “Yeah, just like that. Take it,” and it does the trick because Tony moves up his length, and everything of Steve is lost inside him.

He fucks into Tony’s mouth, still holding him by his hair, and he’s rough and distracted and using too much strength but he doesn’t worry and he doesn’t care and he looks down and sees Tony trying to unfasten his pants.

Steve bats his hand away with the tip of his boot. “Don’t,” he orders, and Tony’s hands go back to Steve’s hips. There are tears at the sides of his eyes.

Steve thrusts harder into Tony’s mouth and comes.

He watches Tony’s throat start working in order to swallow but Steve tugs at his hair and says, “Don’t… Keep it there,” and Tony waits for him to pull out, then shuts his mouth and his eyes and keeps Steve’s come on his tongue like he’s been told.

Steve straightens himself and strips down the rest of the way, throwing his uniform to the floor. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything.

He rummages in a drawer for the bottle of lube he knows is there. God, no one has used it in so long. But he can’t think about that now, it doesn’t matter. It will hardly affect either of them.

He works two slick fingers into himself because he doesn’t care about starting with one, he doesn’t have the time or the patience for it. This needs to be quick, it needs to happen right now.

He scissors his fingers inside himself, bending a bit to gain better access, and it’s too much and too soon and he doesn’t care. He just stares at the back of Tony’s head, and his shoulders, the curve of his ass. He’s kneeling on the ground, still and obedient and facing the other way from Steve.

When Steve is ready—or as ready as he can stand to be—he guides Tony up on his feet and forces him to open his eyes with a hand on his face.

“Come on,” he says leaning forward and wetting his lips, and he doesn’t need to explain. Tony parts his lips and a drop of Steve’s come trickles down his chin. Tony lets Steve plunge into his mouth, lick and suck away his own come, and more of it spills down but it doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter.

Tony kisses him back, and he whimpers, and he curls into Steve a bit when his knees seems to give up on him, but Steve is there to catch him before he can fall and when Tony rests his head against Steve’s shoulder and closes his eyes again, Steve knows that Tony knows, right then and there, that none of this was meant to punish him.  

“Come on,” Steve says again when Tony blinks his eyes open and refocuses on what’s happening. “Get these clothes… Come on,” he urges, and again Tony obeys.

Steve leans on his desk, hand splayed on the hard surface. He spreads his legs and waits, hears Tony fumbling with the bottle of lube Steve left on the bed for him.

Tony nudges at his entrance with his fingers. “You’re not—”

“Just fuck me.”

“Not—” Tony interrupts himself, weighs his options. “On the bed, then.”

“Why—”

“On the bed,” he insists, and _fine_ , Steve thinks, _we’re doing it on the damn bed._

Steve lies down on his back because now he wants to watch Tony, kiss him, touch his face. He spreads his legs again, holds his knees up to his chest. Tony sinks into him even though Steve is far from stretched enough for it, but the lube eases the way and Tony’s determination doesn’t let him waste any time after he bottoms out. He just fucks into Steve, harsh and relentless, and he tastes like come and tears and how much Steve adores him.

“I like… the beard,” Tony says around a grunt.

“Yeah?” Steve reaches over and twists and strokes Tony’s balls until he moans against Steve’s cheek. “Wanna come all over it, sweetheart?”

Tony just nods.

His thrusts grow faster and harder and then there’s that split moment of stillness before Tony comes that Steve still remembers so clearly from their better days.

Tony pulls out of him; Steve sits up on his elbows, and a second later Tony is coming all over his face in hot spurts that hit Steve’s beard and his tongue, because there’s no way he’s keeping his mouth shut for this. He strokes himself to a second orgasm while Tony’s come is still dripping from his chin down on his chest.

Tony is straddling him now and gasping for breath and reassurance, so Steve wraps him up in a hug and kisses his stomach and licks over his ribs and says, “I love you. You’re my husband, I love you.”

Tony kneels down on his heels so they’re face to face and he takes Steve’s head between his hands and kisses him again and says, “I did it all for us. They were gonna kill me. I did it so I knew that one day I could come back to you,” and that’s when Steve notices that Tony is still wearing his wedding ring.

Steve will be angry about this. Eventually, he knows he will. He’ll look back on all the pain and loss he had to endure for the resistance and for Tony and the betrayal and the lying will wrap around his soul and make him blindingly angry.

But now, in this moment that could be the last he has with Tony—because they could die fighting later tonight; because sending Spider-Man in the past could erase their entire reality—for now, Steve pulls Tony close, rubs his face into the soft skin of Tony’s neck, and lets himself be happy.  

**Author's Note:**

> I didn’t put this is the fic because I didn’t want to end up overthinking things, but it’s my headcanon that this timeline mixes a bit of _What if? Civil War_ and Earth-3940. So basically Steve and Tony talk about their issues regarding the SHRA and find a solution that involves, uh, marriage.
> 
> The title is a song by the band This Will Destroy You. 
> 
> On [Twitter](https://twitter.com/silkspectred/status/1005207945758507008)  
> On [Tumblr](http://silkspectred.tumblr.com/post/174703926390/they-move-on-tracks-of-never-ending-light)


End file.
